X-bit labs

Started by: SaberJ2X | Date 01/13/06

Comments: 47 | Last Comment:  06/02/08

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1. WARNING!!!!

These cards DO NOT work on nforce4 motherboards (intel or amd) and some other new motherboards, they all seem to have clicking and popping as can be seen from this 430+ reply thread on creative.com

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=31426&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

Bull shit..

Its running on my eVGA nF4 SLI motherboard now.

Bullshit

Running fine on my ASUS A8N-SLI Premium

Also running fine on my ASUS A8N

X-fi
I read about clicks and pops, well even an old London City did not Click and Pop, next creative talks about THX let me tell you that THX is based on Re-equalizion from any given soundtrack, the low frequency for example from 2 - 47 hz will be send to the Center so that the build in base manager can pick it up, the so called Clear Sound will be curved down from 10 to 14 Khz down and flat at 18 - 20 Khz, The main speakers are set to wide, The rear left and right are set to none wide, the rear center at 0, the Left and richt wall speakers are set to inverted, the front center also to 0, the Lfe output will be set at the given compression, home use 80 hz, Dollby Digital 120 Hz, DTS 116 Hz. Now do you get my drift. Any card what even is trying to change that sound spectrum in any given way ain't THX and there is much more, the Audigy2 ZS had a better spectrum in this range, maybe not so clear in high tones, but why not using some compressors and you have the same as what creative is doing, not everybody is playing a game, guess that is the only thing they can think about and even than, think people its all a market setup.

Xantis.

2. while you're at it check out these two threads

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=32566

(800+ replies!!)

and this one

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=26289

(500+ replies)

Do yourself a favour and check out some alternatives like this card:

http://www.xoxide.com/bluegears-xmystique-ddl-gold.html

http://www.ihda.co.kr/skin/ihda/goods/productList.php?cat_largeno=1

http://www.bluegears.com/xmystique.html

Bluegear's card is just a rebranded korean card from Hitec. Both lack updates since they were released. To tell you the truth I played with the idea to get one but after I read this thread about lack of comatibility with nForce2 chipsets I gave it up.

True: X-Fi had teething problems with some nForce4 boards but these have been - unlike problems with hda/hitec card - cured. You guys are linking to the threads you have not even read! The fix has been released and there are no more problems with nforce4 chipsets. I should know as I am upgading mobo soon. No problems with my X-Fi so far anyway ;)

I meant this thread:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=27&threadid=1669536&enterthread=y
Scroll down to see end of the story...

3. SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro

This is the top model in the family that includes high-quality Cirrus Logic digital-to-analog converters with about 16dB SNR and an external I/O unit.

16db? or 106db?

Thank you for pointing out the typo: the correct number is 116dB.

4. My soundcard upgrade path since 1995...

Soundblaser 16 ISA (12 feet long this was) ---> Aureal 3D (WCPR'd to work on Win2k, then XP) ---> Philips Acoustic Edge (now).

5. A good review, but there was one thing I would have like to have seen added.

I think it would have been beneficial to measure the additional power this card took over both the Audigy and the on-board sound. Since that and heat dissipation are real concerns for people, it deserves some attention, especially since there is an extra power connector on it. I really don't know how much power this card wants, but in order to make a fully informed decision, I'd really need to.

Otherwise, very thorough and useful.

6. bass redirection can be activad in all modes using the thx console. in gaming mode is ALSO accesible directly from creative menu

7. its a very nice card, BUT WARE IS THE DOLBY DIGITAL LIVE SUPORT !!!
whit out it these cards are not interesting for the real audio enthusiast

Dolby Live and "a real audio enthusiast" have never heard of each other.
Dolby Live is a lossy compression format that introduces audible latency to the signal.
Had that with soundstorm before. No, thank You.

you never heard nVidea soundstorm ore a teratec DD-L card dit you ?

i tryed the X-Fi and teratec DD-L cards and use to own a nForce 2 mobo
in cobenation whit a YAMAHA RP-U200 DD amp. and some magnat 5.1 loadspeakers
http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/products/cavit/rpu200.asp
this combenation sounds beter then what most people use for there normal home soundsystem.

when i dit hearing test's on it i found out that the teratec sound is mouths beter when playing sound and movie files but in game's it all depens on if the game suport only SB EAX 3/4/5 ore also other soundcards

when using the teratec whit batlefield 2 ore Q4 the sound is just crap and even a audigy 1 wins hamds down
but when you play F.E.A.R. not even the X-Fi can beat the DD-L card
(yes you have nicer sound efects but even do that the efects it self sounds a bit better they dont have the cristall clear feelling that DD hase and not the placement)

and its not realy there fould ider EAX 1/2 is openstandard but EAX 3/4/5 is a SB only standard

8. My C-Media 8738-Card surpasses X-FI easily because there's still no Linux driver and sound that occupies the CPU is still better than no sound.

I couldn't agree more. I want to run CentOS with BQ to work on, but with no XFi drivers for linux, it's either ditch my near $200 card for a $40 dollar sb live! with good driver support for Linux. Either way it realy pisses me off. We spend the cash on the hardware and they won't even support the top few os's, just WinDOUGHzzzz! And even then, only 32 bit.

What's the point in having a kcik ass machine if you can't run the ****ing thing?

Maybe b/c the "top few OSs" are "WinDoughZZZzz" (thats got to be the most retarded one yet - did you think of it?) at 96% marketshare, followed by "others" at 4% share. I can see how Creative would definitely want to devote lots of resources to a free OS run by hobbiest who feel people who charge for products are evil. Face it... The Linux community is a pretty ugly looking thing for most vendors who arent just looking to pimp services, consulting, and fat support contracts.

9. hydra, is that issue related to Windows drivers? Or a hardware issue.

Back when the SB Live was released, it worked very bad on certain chipsets and on dual CPU systems, it made pops and clicks.

If you switched to some other OS that supported the sound card, those pops/clicks were gone! The chipset problem was a different story though!

It leads me to believe that this could be a repeat of a Windows Driver or hardware issue.

If its a driver issue, it won't be fixed for yonks! (even then, its not likely to get fixed at all). Welcome to Creative's world!

I have aan Asus P4P800motherboard and a 2.8 Ghz pocessor. I cannot (attempting with 2 cards) to install the software and have the d--- thing work akl I can get is sound from my front 3 soeakers on my Creative 7.1 speaker I am running an ATI X850 GRAPHICS CARD AND WONDER ABOUT COMPATABILITY ISSUES. i TRY TO START ANY OF THE SOFTWARE . i GET ERROR MESSAGES FROM ALL ATTEMPTS SAYING "THERE IS NO DEVICE TO SUPPORT TTHA UTILITY". tHIS HAPPENS WITH ALL UTILITIES. any IDEAS WOULD BE APPREICTED.

10. If only they would have included 2 XLR/TRS combo ports on the front of the 5-1/2" drive bay box so that it could be used for home recording as well.

11. Why is it no one wants to do a comparison from within the X-Fi range?

Namely, compare the Fatal1ty/Elite Pro against the Music/Plat card.

This will show the benefit of X-Ram concerning the CPU utilization above 64 voices with CMSS 3D heapdhone mode enabled, such as gaming on BF2 with max/ultra sound at a lan party with headphones: The xtreme music will consume up to 70% CPU utilization while the X-Ram models stay at less than 3% CPU.

I agree.

I would like to see a 4 way X-FI round up. I can play BF2 in ultra mode with my Xtreme and the framerates are smooth as silky. No slowdowns.

12. I own the Xtreme version. Best upgrade I done to my pc. Sound is so freaking crisp and clear.

almost blows my audiophile 24/96 in the water.

13. enfin quelqu'un qui s'y in téresse en profondeur

14. Save yourself some money. I have an xtrememusic hooked up to my audigy2 front panel, works perfectly, and the xtrememusic has eax5.0 too, other than the 64mb of ram, all of these are the same card. EAX 5.0, headphone cmss, etc, all of that is on the xtrememusic too. The front panel is creative's standard front panel, the opticals work, the headphones work, etc. And I have had 0 problems with my nforce4 board working with it.

15. It's a sound card...how about telling us how it sounds??

16. Is the SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro the only one with the high impedance input?

Yes, other versions would require DI box to record from high impedance outputs like electric guitars and such

17. I purchased the Fatal1ty card to replace an on board chipset and found as a whole the card performs rather well. I have noticed that the CMSS-3D in both headphone and speaker mode will tend to distort some of the very low end frequencies. This is quite apparent with Gatecrasher- Robert Miles-Children-Tilt'.

It would be nice if Creative would standardize their Drive Bay. It seems like every new card that uses a bay has a slightly different pin out. I believe that X-Fi bay is the fourth version of the Live Drive. Creative should at least keep their own products compatiable.

It would be nice if they had included a round cable for the bay instead of the flat ribbon cable or at least made it so you could replace it with a standard round PATA cable.

18. This card has been thourougly discussed here, have a look
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=163703

19. I haven't bothered to read the entire review...

But do you know if the Creative X-Fi re-samples mp3s to 48khz from 44khz (just like the Audigy 2 series). This makes them sound worse; it sounds so much better when an mp3 is decoded into wav, then burned at 1x (using my 6 yr old 8X cd writer) and played as an audio cd in my car stereo

pls respond to jhellier@gmail.com

20. $400 and no...

Speaker auto calibration instead we get
"take your ruler and measure from the center of yoru forehead to the left speaker. Good. Now stick out your pointing fingers...that's it both your left and right hands now, what angle is that/"
hmmm say 31.55 degrees!! No more like 40 degrees now I know wy my new X-Fi $400 card sounds like my old Audigy Platnium well because they have not used all the "new" processing power to due what a $400 HT receiver can do and that is SPEAKER CALIBRATION!!!!!

I AM SO DISAPPOINTED AND I SO WANTED TO BUY THIS CARD SYSTEM. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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